Very active winter weather pattern from the Rockies to the Midwest to the mid-Atlantic

AccuWeather

More bursts of cold air and snow are in store for millions of Americans over the coming week.

Transcript

00:00It's a forecast feast on the Forecast Feed.

00:03This Friday, we're taking a look at persistent cold across the Midwest and the Northeast.

00:07Chances for snow, a very active storm track for the Great Lakes region, rounds of lake

00:12effect, and we're going to be trying to sniff out perhaps the next opportunity for snow

00:16along I-95.

00:18Where could it happen?

00:19What would need to change in the models for that to happen?

00:21Let's take a look at this here.

00:22Now, big picture, very big picture, into next week, one thing for the week ahead.

00:27We've got more midwinter chill holding across the Mid-Atlantic and across all the Northeast

00:33and the Midwest as well.

00:35Northern Plains, it's just downright cold if you're east of the Rockies and north of Interstate

00:4040.

00:41Before we really get into the details of next week, though, I want to briefly touch on this

00:45next storm system.

00:47This weekend, spinning its wheels from Montana down into areas like the Midwest.

00:52So from Montana to Toledo, Ohio, we're going to be facing some snow.

00:56And you can see the arrival time here starting 7 a.m. Saturday into the Central Dakotas by

01:021 p.m. Saturday through Sioux Falls.

01:04You're going to have a tough afternoon in Sioux Falls through Des Moines, rolling into

01:06the evening.

01:07And then Chicago rolls into it there on late Saturday night into Sunday morning.

01:12How much snow are we looking at?

01:13Well, we're going to look at the models here with this, but just a brief kind of a reset.

01:17Three to six here with my sloppy handwritten font.

01:21It's about as well as I can do with that.

01:22One to three inches in a lighter shade.

01:24Now, this cuts off Sunday.

01:26So Sunday night into Monday morning, we're going to still see more falling farther east.

01:31Let's get into the models here.

01:33And, well, for starters, we got plenty of cold in place.

01:38Even in the northeast, we had record lows in some spots on Friday morning.

01:43Not as many records into Saturday.

01:44We're going to see a little bit of a slightly more typical cold night.

01:47And this weekend is going to be chilly.

01:50Temperatures still below average.

01:51Your average high in areas like Boston, still in the low 40s.

01:56And in Philadelphia, in the upper 40s this time of the year.

01:58It's early in the season for this stuff.

02:00But you can see we have another big discharge of cold that comes in Sunday night, Monday.

02:05And into Monday night, I see a lot of areas with near or below zero temperatures in some of these colder nuggets there.

02:14With a freezing line all the way down to near Jacksonville, North Carolina, and down through Huntsville, Alabama.

02:20So it's going to be cold out there.

02:22No shortage of cold.

02:23Now, this disturbance that's cruising through the Midwest this weekend, it's this somewhat subtle shortwave.

02:29There it is in the world of the GFS model.

02:33And it continues to move east with the European model looking pretty similar.

02:38It's kind of a concise short disturbance, shortwave that's not going to be all that dynamic.

02:44But with cold air in place, it doesn't take much to get some snow going.

02:47And you can see we're going to be dealing with the north side of the center of low pressure here.

02:51Where we're going to be dealing with that potential and the likelihood of snow falling.

02:55There's your center of low pressure.

02:57And the north side of the storm track, that's where we expect to see the best snowfall, the greatest snowfall rates.

03:03And as we move forward through Saturday night to Sunday morning, this scoots east.

03:07For those of you in the northeast, it's really not going to be a big deal if you're east of the mountains.

03:13There will be some accumulating snow near the Great Lakes, the west slopes of the mountains.

03:16In through New England, even into coastal Maine, Sunday night, Monday, you'll see some snow.

03:20That's the GFS.

03:21How's the European look?

03:23Similar there on the north side of that low pressure system through Des Moines, Iowa.

03:26Decent snow.

03:27Saturday night, Sunday, Saturday afternoon and evening, it moves east across the plains.

03:31Midwest, you can see with the European model, it really doesn't produce much snow in the northeast,

03:39except for some snow showers in the interior.

03:42And it's not the ideal lake effect setup.

03:45You can see the flow.

03:46I'm going to highlight some of these isobars behind this system.

03:49And again, I realize they compete with the state lines and so forth.

03:52But it's weak flow from the north.

03:54It would bring some lake effect snow showers.

03:56Slightly greater, again, during other events.

04:00This high pressure system just cuts in too fast.

04:02And once this rolls in, it will shut off any type of lake effect snow.

04:07That sits over the region here.

04:09So a very short-lived lake effect setup following this storm system.

04:14And again, not much of a contribution here for the I-95 here from any moisture.

04:18It's just too weak of a disturbance.

04:20But beyond that, what can we do?

04:21There's another system that's going to be digging in through the plains.

04:24This one could be another decent snow producer.

04:28Look at this.

04:29In the interior, and as we look at the base of this trough, it's almost a neutral tilt.

04:36Not northwest to southeast too much.

04:38Not northeast to southwest so much either.

04:41Because remember, the map is curved here with this Mercator projection of the map, I should say.

04:48But it's going to give us a little bit more of a negative tilt once it gets farther east.

04:54But it might be too late for much of that.

04:56The negative tilt northwest to southeast is what often produces more in the way of snow for the east coast.

05:05But again, it's going to be too far east for that to bring much to the table.

05:09If this were a setup where this dip in the jet stream was farther west,

05:14then we could see more of that moisture come north.

05:17We'd see some snow production, but it's just too far east.

05:20So this would get going for the northwest Atlantic.

05:23And that's going to be a little bit too late for us to see any impacts.

05:26So the midweek snow event, again, a pretty good shot for the interior.

05:30Not much going for snow for I-95 again.

05:34There'd be a little bit of a rain-snow mix for some to the north.

05:36And here's the European model.

05:38Again, it's mainly snow in the interior and very little farther to the south.

05:43And then we look ahead to the next system.

05:45This one has a little bit more noise down to the south.

05:48And it's a disturbance that will have a little bit more north to south amplitude here.

05:54And this one also, it's just set up a little too far east.

05:59And again, in the European similar story, it gets going.

06:02But again, I think it's just a little too far east.

06:04If this were to set up farther west, then we'd be in business here for this to bring us a little more snow.

06:11But you can see it just briefly kind of digs in.

06:14If it were to dig in farther west over the plains and then present itself in that kind of a fashion,

06:18just a little farther west, we'd probably see more.

06:20But there's potential out there this coming weekend.

06:23So we need to watch that trough.

06:24If it can dig a little faster, a little farther west, the European is hinting at this.

06:28The European is kind of hitting in the middle between these two extremes that I'm talking about

06:31and what the GFS produces.

06:32It does bring some snow to Virginia.

06:34And if it could be a little more amplified and a little bit more tilted northwest to southeast,

06:38then we could be talking about a decent snow event for more in the entire northeast

06:43and not just a little sliver of the mid-Atlantic.

06:45So more snow is coming, especially midwest, into parts of the northeast next week.

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